“I made this film because I missed my Romania,” director Cătălin Mitulescu has said, and his warmhearted, anecdotal depiction of the last months of Ceauşescu's rule is tinged with nostalgia for the everyday details of childhood-even if that childhood involves playfully plotting an assassination. On the outskirts of Bucharest in 1989, seventeen-year-old Eva (Dorotheea Petre) is more or less like any teenager, haltingly pursuing a love affair and observing the antics of her seven-year-old brother Lalalilu (Timotei Duma) with bemused affection. When her boyfriend, the son of a Securitate officer, accidentally smashes a bust of Ceauşescu at school, it changes Eva's life, and foreshadows larger changes to come. With appealing performances (Petre won the Best Actress award at Cannes) and gentle humor, Mitulescu's debut feature reconstructs a notorious historical moment on a determinedly human scale. Martin Scorsese and Wim Wenders are credited as executive producers; the film is Romania's entry for the 2007 Academy Awards.

The Way I Spent the End of the World is repeated on Sunday, November 4.